Nuclear chemist, born in Ishpeming, MI. He studied at the University of California at Los Angeles and Berkeley, becoming professor of chemistry at Berkeley in 1945, and was part of the team which discovered the transuranic elements plutonium (1940), americium, and curium (1944). By bombarding the last two with alpha rays he produced the elements berkelium and calfiornium in 1950. He shared the 1951 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with Edwin McMillan, and later became chariman of the US Atomic Energy Commission (1961-71).